Throughout the world objects and areas need to be protected from unwanted access by the general public, workers, animals, machinery or the like. The reason to prevent or limit access could be due to security reasons, dangerous goods, child hazards, occupational health and safety reasons, or the like. One such area where issues of access are regularly considered is in the transportation industry. The transportation industry involves trucks, vans, trains, planes, ships and the like moving about places with high traffic and regularly carrying goods with varying degrees of secrecy, danger or hazard.
To limit the dangers to workers, the general public, machinery and the like shipping terminals for example are adopting isolation protocols known as a “Restricted Zone”. These include isolating work areas around mobile plant, walkways, truck driver isolation/waiting areas during routine operations and maintenance or during emergency times such as an accident/spill.
Unauthorized access to a restricted zone, especially temporary ones, is common and difficult to manage. Many uses of restricted zones involve situations where the responsible operators are unable to see all the access points about the zone which makes the zone difficult to manage. For example, it is possible for an unauthorised person to enter the zone without detection. An undetected breach of a restricted zone could be fatal to that person, cause serious machinery damage or compromise the purpose for which the barrier was established.
There are few if any means for ensuring that safe zones are correctly deployed and operated, especially when they may have been erected in a low traffic area.
Even in circumstances where a barrier is erected about an area, the fact that the barrier is essentially static allows intruders to willfully breech the barrier without an alarm being raised with personnel either legitimately in the area or overseeing the area. This is particularly important in the transportation industry where work areas can be spread widely over larger sites and are thus not susceptible to constant surveillance guards, gatekeepers, flagmen or the like.
Currently, there are few if any means by which an operator can assure themselves and others that a restricted zone is actually in place and operational without having staff physically present about the zone.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a barrier assembly that indicates to a supervisor, operator or the like, a warning of a breach of a secure zone.
There is also a need to provide a barrier assembly which advises supervisor, operator or the like of the status of a restricted zone and of any breaches, quickly, easily and affordably.